ETHICS or Moral Philosophy

Ethics or moral philosophy is thinking about how we make moral decisions. The
first question is often indeed if we can in fact make moral decisions. Often people
confuse being tolerant as a moral goal with allowing anything, meaning we
cannot make any moral decisions about the behavior of other people. We will
discuss this first. Needless to say, most philosophers disagree with this. Not only
can we make moral decisions, we do make moral decisions every day. What we
eat is a moral decision, whether or not we come to class is a moral decision, how
we interact with people is a moral decision. So for most philosophers, the
question is not can we make moral decisions but how do we make the best moral
decisions?

Often people come into philosophy with the belief that it is somehow
inappropriate or rude to make moral judgments. Moral relativism is the view that
morality is either relative to each individual or to the society and as such one has
no basis on which to make a moral judgment. The argument though is fallacious.
It takes the following form:

There are no objective moral standards. Since there are no objective

moral standards we should tolerate anything.

Ironically, toleration is best supported by arguing that it is an objective moral

standard. But that is not what is going on here. What is being said is that there
are no objective moral standards and then, in the very next sentence an objective
moral standard is asserted in the conclusion that we ‘should tolerate others’.
Either there are no objective moral standards or there are not. One cannot assert
there are none and then assert an objective moral standard. And if there were an
objective moral standard, why would it be that we should tolerate anything?
Surely there are things which we should not tolerate at all such as rape and
murder. To claim that we cannot make a judgment about these actions is to be
mistaken about our abilities. We do make claims about rape (among many other
things). We make a very clear claim that rape is immoral and we back up that
claim with the force of the law. This is not to say that toleration is a bad thing,
some toleration is certainly warranted, for example when we truly do not know
what is right or wrong say in the example of whether or not to worship a god and
in what manner that worshipping should be done. This is something that we do
not know so to force others to behave in a certain manner on this issue would be
wrong. But to make the claim that it would be wrong, we have to argue that there
is some objective moral standard that would make this wrong. So what could this
objective moral standard be?
Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics
There have been four major moral philosophical traditions in Western civilization.
The first one we will look at is Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Aristotle lived from 384-322
B.C. for most of the time in Athens. He was not an Athenian but was rather from
Macedonia. His father had been court physician and Aristotle would later tutor
Alexander the Great. It is hard to overestimate the impact that Aristotle has had
on Western civilization. He was a student of Plato at his academy for twenty years
but ultimately disagreed with Plato on nearly everything. He left the academy to
form his own school, the Lyceum.

His moral philosophy has had such an impact on Western civilization because it
was adopted by the Catholic Church and was spread throughout its tremendous
territories. Indeed, Aristotle was even made into a pagan saint by the church. In
Dante’s Inferno as well as in Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, Aristotle’s immense
presence is demonstrated by these great authors simply referring to him as ‘the
Philosopher’.

Aristotle is what is known as a teleologist. A telos in ancient Greek means a goal

or an end. It is that at which something aims. Aristotle thought that in order to
know something we had to know what its purpose was. If we could know what it
was aiming for , we could know a great deal about whatever particular thing we
might be studying, in this case ethics or the good. So he begins his great work
the Nichomachaen Ethics with the question ‘What is the good for man?’ The
good, for Aristotle, is that at which all things aim. So he takes a look around at
what it is that people do. They work, they shop, they eat, they have sex, they talk,
they fight, they love, they do many, many things. He divides mans activities into
two categories. The first one he calls instrumental ends. These are acts done as a
means to other ends, that is, acts used as an instrument to get something else.
Coming to class might be seen as an instrumental goal. The student thinks that
she needs a degree to get the job she thinks she wants or perhaps to simply be a
better human being. But either way, she needs to do well in the class to get the
degree. To do well in the class, one must come to class. So she comes to class not
necessarily for the class itself but as an instrument to something else. Aristotle
will argue that almost all human activity falls into this category. Nearly everything
we do we do for the sake of something else. We seek enjoyment and pleasure.
We seek sex and drink and honor. But none of these we seek in and of
themselves, or if we do, we are mistaken in what our true goal should in fact be.

The other sort of ends that humans pursue Aristotle terms intrinsic. These are
ends we pursue for their own sake. These ends must be self-sufficient. Aristotle
points out that people often get confused and think that what they should be
aiming at are instrumental ends i.e. a life of enjoyment and pleasure, a life of
drink and sex, or honor in the eyes of others. But these are not good in and of
themselves. When a human is asked why do you pursue wealth he might answer
because it will provide me with a big house and a nice car. But then one might
simly push the question back and ask the person why they want a big house and
a nice car. The person might reply because this will get them respect or perhaps a
beautiful mate. But again we can ask why do you want respect or a beautiful
mate? And if the person thinks about it enough Aristotle will argue that he will
eventually answer “. Because I want to be happy and I believe having these things
will make me happy.’

And herein lies a major component of Aristotle’s moral philosophy. The one
intrinsic end at which all human actions aim, knowingly or not, is happiness. This
is the one goal that all humans have for themselves. It may, and often does,
happen that a person thinks that what they want is money or sex or drugs or
prestige but this is only because they haven’t thought about it deeply enough.
They only want these things because they believe these things will bring them
happiness.

And Aristotle writes one of the great lessons here. ‘Be Careful what you take
pleasure in.’ The human creature is a creature of habit. And people can and do
mistake pleasure for happiness. It is not that pleasure in and of itself is wrong in
any way, it’s just that mistaking pleasure for happiness will ruin your chance at
attaining happiness. Pleasure and happiness are not the same thing and indeed
often the things that bring you pleasure will not bring you happiness. Consider
the people who get lost to drugs or sex or money or prestige. They found
pleasure in something, mistakenly thought that pleasure was happiness and
started chasing that pleasure to the detriment of the other aspects of their lives.
And they don’t end up happy.

We must understand what sort of creatures we are Aristotle argues. We are

creatures who are pleasure pursuers. We are also lazy. We are lazy intellectually,
physically and morally. If there is an easier way to do something we are often
tempted to go down that easier path. But we must understand that that easier
path will not lead us to what we really want. We must remember that what we
really want is to be happy. And although being happy is not easily attainable, it is
attainable for Aristotle. He does think that a human who lives his life in the
correct manner can indeed be happy. Now this happiness is not a constant state
of euphoria, it is more a sublime feeling of contentment than euphoria. But it is
better than the alternative. Most humans will not even be able to attain this
because they will get lost along the way to happiness.

So then if happiness is man’s true goal, what exactly is happiness and how is it
attained? It is the natural good for man. But in order to know how to attain
happiness we need to know how man is self-realized. This goes back to Aristotle’s
teleology. In order to know how to fulfill something we need to know its function,
what its purpose is. Once we know what mans purpose is, we can figure out how
to fulfill it and man can be happy. The good of anything is determined by how
well it fulfills its function. Aristotle argues that man must have a function as a
whole. Each part of him has a function. His eyes see, his ears hear, etc. so man as
a whole must also have a function.

So the question then becomes what is mans purpose? In order to figure this out,
Aristotle again looks around at what it is that people actually do. Mans purpose
could be nutrition and growth but these are functions he shares with the animals.
A things function must be exclusive to it. So nutrition and growth cannot be mans
function. It could also be a life of experience and sensation but this too is shared
by animals. What is it that man does that the other animals don’t do? What is his
one true function? And Aristotle will answer this with the answer that has survived
down through the ages. What separates man from animals is his ability to reason.
Now Aristotle is a great biologist, he does not mean here that animals do not
reason in the sense of figuring out how to hunt their prey or to manipulate a
situation. This is not the reason that Aristotle is talking about. It is mans ability to
reason about reason. That is, his ability to do philosophy that is specific to man.
As far as we can tell, this is the one thing that the other animals do not do. We
may see chimpanzees doing all sorts of complicated communications and puzzle
solving. Indeed some animals are even self-aware and can demonstrate that they
are self-aware. But what they do not do, is philosophize about their condition.
They do not, as far as we can tell, discuss how their society should be organized
or what the moral thing to do would be or whether or not there is a god. These
things seem to be the purview of man alone. And so it must be in the fulfillment
of this higher function of reason that mans purpose is to be found. And once we
fulfill this purpose, we will find our happiness.

Aristotle writes that ‘happiness is the activity of the soul in accordance with
perfect virtue’. (NE, I) It is important to note the word activity here. Aristotle
thought that in order to be happy one had to be active. A person who is asleep or
who is disengaged is not capable of being happy. But then one must ask what
does he mean by ‘perfect virtue’? First, it is not an excellence of the body but of
the soul. It is not that Aristotle was unconcerned by excellence of the body, he
was living in ancient Athens after all, but this is not the topic here. There are two
kinds of virtue. Intellectual virtue is the ability to think and/or skill at mathematics
and philosophy. Moral virtue is different. Moral virtue is acting correctly in
accordance with reason. Aristotle points out here that humans are not animals
and as such we should not allow ourselves to be ruled by passion but rather by
reason. Since this is what he concluded before under how man is to fulfill his
function. It is reason that is mans stand alone quality. And it is in the fulfillment
of reason that we will come to happiness. Sometimes our passions might be
incredibly strong indeed, as in a mother who is concerned for the welfare of her
child, but still one must reason out one’s thoughts and activities.

There are three things in the human soul. First there are the passions (emotions),
second is the capacity to experience these emotions or as Aristotle terms them
our ‘capacities’ and third is our state of character which he defines as our
disposition to choose how we react to our emotions. Passions and faculties
however are not morally praiseworthy or blameworthy because they are not
things over which we have control. Rather it is in the third part of our soul, our
character that we find that we have control and hence this is where our actions
can be morally praiseworthy or blameworthy. He writes:

The virtue of man will be the disposition (state of character) through which he
becomes a good man and through which he will do his job well. (NE,I)

Virtues are acquired by practice. They are a state of character. The virtuous
person is one who does what he is supposed to do because he wants to-it is built
into his very character. Character is made through habit. As children, we must be
taught how to behave in certain ways. We may not want to behave in these ways.
For example, being grateful. If you cannot be grateful for what you have, you will
never have enough. However, being grateful is not necessarily an easy thing to
be. It is a learned activity. When children are young they may be taught to act as
if they are grateful by saying thank you or writing thank you notes even when
they feel no gratitude whatsoever. But what will happen, Aristotle argues, is that
over the course of many years of being forced to say thank you, eventually they
will actually be grateful. And they will be grateful because it is built into their
character. It is what they choose to be. And this will make their lives better. They
will be a better friend, a better student, a better mate, a better child, a better
parent. And this will lead them to being happy with their lives.

Virtue for Aristotle is a disposition involving choice. When one has a choice, which
for Aristotle is all the time, how does one choose? He thinks that most of the time
we choose based on our character but that our character also determines our
choices. We can change our character but it is very difficult to do. It is better if
our parents brought us up with the right character so that we already have the
advantage of not choosing to lie, not choosing to steal, not choosing to cheat.
We don’t do these things not because we have weighed the consequences and
decided the chance of getting caught is too great, we don’t do these things
because we don’t want to do this things. It is not in our character.

How does one become a virtuous person? We become virtuous by becoming

habituated to the proper choices. Virtue, Aristotle writes, is a ‘habit or trained
faculty of choice, the characteristics of which lies in moderation or observance of
the mean relative to the persons concerned, as determined by reason.’ When we
were children, it was our guardians’ responsibilities to make correct choices for
us. What we ate, what we read, what music we listened to, what television shows
we watched, who our friends were. These choices were all made by our guardians
and hopefully they made the right choices. But even if they did not we are not
children any longer and our choices are now our own. It is our responsibility to
make the correct choices. Habits can be learned and unlearned. It is never too
late to make your character better by making better choices nor is it ever too late
to make your character worse by making bad choices. And the degree to which
you are successful in this will determine the degree to which you are happy.

And it is by our character that we can, and are judged. This moral philosophy is
still a widely held one in Western civilization. We hold people responsible for
their choices because we believe they had a choice. We also talk a great deal
about a person’s character. The formation of character is a big topic in parenting
circles, education and civic education circles. We may know someone who we
have known to lie. While we may generally find being around this person
enjoyable, when we really have to know the truth, it is not to them that we will
turn. And if we did, we would be foolish to do so. We know they will lie in the
right circumstances. We know they have the character of a liar. And liars lie. True,
not all the time. But that is what they do. So when it really counts, when our back
is against the wall and we really need to know whether or not something is true,
we will not call on the person with the character of a liar.

And this is unfortunate for us but it is more unfortunate for the liar. People with
good characters do not choose to be friends with people who do not have good
characters. If you want to have good friends, you must be a good friend. And in
order to be a good friend there are certain things that you must do and other
things you may not do. And you want to have friends because they are a key
component to your happiness. There are basically two things human beings need
to be happy. The first one is companionship and the other is intellectual
stimulation in some fashion or another. Not everyone will find history fascinating
but if not history then art or language or farming or nature or music or
something else. But we need these two components. And neither one of them is
available to someone with a bad character.

Aristotle introduces the idea of the mean between the extremes. Nearly all human
actions can be put on a continuum from too little to too much. There are however
five actions that are essentially evil and should be rejected outright. These are
malice, envy, adultery, theft and murder. There is never too little of these actions.
One should be careful though what he means by each of these things. Murder is
unjustifiable killing. Killing someone in a justifiable manner is not wrong. But what
is malice and why is it wrong to engage in it? Malice is a general sort of dislike for
humanity, someone with a chip on their shoulder. One might say perhaps that it
is someone who is looking for trouble. Why is this always evil and should be
rejected? The answer is that no one of a good character wants to be friends with
someone who carries around malice. It is an unattractive quality and seems to
bring trouble along with it wherever it goes.

What is wrong with envy? Well, think about it. Who does envy harm? Does it
harm the person of whom that you are envious? Probably not. Who does it
harm? It harms the person who carries the envy around. Again, people of good
character do not want to be friends with people who engage in envy. It is
troublesome. And Aristotle also thinks it is unreasonable. Everyone’s life is
difficult. Everyone has troubles. Everyone has problems. If you are envious of
someone, it is because you mistakenly believe that your life would be better if
you could just have this or that. While your life might indeed be better if you had
this or that, being envious of the person who has this or that does not get you
this or that. It simply weights you down. It makes you have pain. It makes you
unattractive to people with good characters.

And of course being envious or being malicious may lead you to do other things,
like steal or cheat. And these are never acceptable. But one should notice why
these are not acceptable. These are not acceptable because they will not lead to
good friendships. If you have the character of a cheater, people who don’t or
won’t cheat will not be around you. If you have the character of a thief, people
who don’t or won’t steal won’t be around you. In other words, if you want friends
with good characters, you yourself must have a good character.

So Aristotle tells us that there are five things that we should reject outright and
everything else can be placed on the continuum and that reason tells us that
these things should be pursued by following the mean between the extremes.
Take for example courage. While being courageous in the right circumstance at
the right time is a good thing, too much courage is simply being rash while too
little is being a coward. But how do we know how much? Well, this is different for
each person over the course of their lives. This is why he calls it the mean
between the extremes. There is not an exact middle point to which he can point
and say this is exactly where you should be. Where you should be will vary from
person to person and time to time. But it will always be in the mean. Somewhere
near the middle, not too much and not too little. Take for example pride. There
will be some times in your life where you should engage more in pride than in
others. If you are in a job interview, you will want to present your
accomplishments unabashedly. But if you are having dinner with friends on a
weekend evening, presenting your accomplishments unabashedly would be crass.
How you react is dependent on the situation and the people in the situation. But,
again, it will always be in the mean between the extremes.
When we get in the habit of acting this way, that is, when we become habituated,
we have the disposition to choose the right thing because we want to, not
because we have to. It is this disposition to choose a virtuous activity that forms
our virtuous character in us. Character is formed by the decisions we make and
the decisions we make form our character. We may not have been brought up
correctly so we have certain character flaws but we do have control over the
choices that we make and can begin to choose new things that will lead to a
better character. And the more often we choose the virtuous activity, the easier it
gets. Eventually, it becomes part of our character and we simply would not
choose to live another way.

Kant’s Deontology
We already discussed Kant when we discussed his response to Hume’s skepticism.
He also had one of the most influential moral philosophies in Western civilization.
Most commonly he is referred to as a deontologist. A deontologist is someone
who studies duties and while Kant held that duties are important, I think it is
misleading to classify him this way. But I shall go with convention and explain.

In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals Kant responds to Aristotle.

While he agrees with a lot of what Aristotle argues, he disagrees at the very
beginning with a rather simple point. Like Aristotle, he thinks that humans are
separate from the animals because of our ability to do abstract reasoning and like
Aristotle he agrees that nature does nothing in vain, that every organ has a
purpose for which it is adapted. But he thinks that Aristotle got it wrong. If
nature had wanted us to be happy, she would have created us differently. Indeed
there is often a correlation between being unhappy and being intelligent. The
better one uses reason, the more unhappy one can be. If nature had wanted us to
be happy she would have left us in a different position. For Kant, there is a far
nobler purpose for which reason is properly intended. But if not happiness, what
could that purpose be? To Kant, there is a rather obvious answer. The purpose of
our ability to be moral is, in fact, to be moral. We are the only creatures who can
be moral. If there is to be morality on this earth, it is going to come from human
beings. Chimpanzees can’t do it, elephants can’t do it. The only being capable of
freely choosing right from wrong is the human being. The far nobler purpose that
Kant has in mind is bringing morality into existence. And because of his teleology,
Kant believes that this is man’s ultimate purpose, this is why nature created him
the way she did. This basic disagreement with Aristotle leads Kant down a
different path than Aristotle about what morality is and how it is to be used.

Reason is meant to have an influence on our will. We observe that everything in

nature has a purpose, including in our own nature. This observation is an effort by
our understanding to make the world intelligible to ourselves. Humans, however,
are the only being in nature capable of forming a concept of purposes and who
can make out a system of purposes. Most all of nature is directed towards some
end or goal but there must be ends in themselves. Humans, because of their free
will and reason, are the only being capable of being ends in themselves. Kant
arrives here at a quite species-centric conclusion but he thinks that humans are
the only thing that qualifies to be the final end of all of nature. Because man is
the only being capable of conceiving of and of following the sole unconditioned
end (what ought to be done), man is thus an end in himself.

Nature does nothing in vain: reasons purpose is to produce the end of a will that
is not merely good for something else but is good in and of itself. Every rational
creature possesses this idea of a will. Hence it requires clarification, not teaching.
There is no need to teach someone how to be moral. The moral law is already
within any rational creature. It is simply the case that people get mixed up and
can’t quite see what the moral law is commanding them to do.

Because we are the only creature who can make out this system of purposes and
because we are the only creature who can bring morality into existence, it is our
duty to do so. This will not always be easy and indeed may in fact at times be very
difficult and may make us unhappy. But it is the creature that we are and we
must understand this about ourselves. We serve a purpose, just like every other
thing in the universe. The purpose of something is found by figuring out what it is
that it exclusively adds to the universe. And morality is the one thing that we as
humans can add to the universe. If morality and justice are to come into existence
it is going to be through humans, no one else can do it.

So we must bring morality into existence. But how do we do that? We follow the
moral law. This is rather a simple statement. But for Kant, it has profound truth. A
law is a law because it is not conditional. If it is the law that I stop at a STOP sign,
it is not a suggestion, it is not dependent on circumstances. It is a universal
command. I must stop regardless of how I feel about it and I must stop regardless
of the situation. And for Kant, if there is to be a moral law, it must have the same
qualities, that is it must be a universal command, or as many commentators put it,
a categorical imperative.

But if there were to be a universal command that applied to all humans all of the
time what could that possibly be? Kant actually offers several different variations
on this, but to my mind the best instantiation is the following:

One should always act in such a way that humanity either in oneself or in others
is always treated as an end in and of itself and never merely as a means.

For Kant, this one command applies to all humans, everywhere, all the time. It
admits of no exceptions. There is never a time when morality is left behind. All
human actions everywhere fall under this law, that is what makes it a law. What
would it mean to follow this law? It would mean that in every interaction with
humans, including yourself, you always treat them as a subject, never as an
object. Why? Because reason tells us that humans are never objects. Humans
experience the world as subjects, not as objects. There is something significantly
different between a human being and a table. The table is an object, it has not
subjective experience of the world. But a human does. There is nothing a human
being can do to make themselves into an object. We are all subjects, all the time.
Hence it would be irrational to treat a human as if they were an object. For Kant,
the simple truth is that humans are not objects, ever. To treat a human as if they
were an object is irrational and it is because it is irrational that it is immoral.

But what exactly is it to treat a human as a subject and never merely as an object?
When we treat someone as if they were a means to an end and that is all that
they are, then we are treating them as if they were an object and we are behaving
both irrationally and immorally. Take for example, a cashier at the grocery store.
He has a job to do and we use him as a means to an end. So far, because he has
chosen to do this job, this is not immoral. But if we were to treat him as if this was
all that he was, as if his sole purpose in life was to check us out of the grocery
store, that he never had any other purpose in his life, that he has no subjective
experience of the world, then we would be treating him as merely a means to an
end. He did not simply snap into existence when we needed him to check out our
groceries and then disappear the second we were done interacting with him. He
has a life. He has things that he likes and dislikes, a personal subjective
experience of the world. And we must treat him as if this were true, because in
fact it is true. We must show him the respect due a human being. So while we
can have a transaction with him wherein he checks out our groceries and we pay
him and he gives us change and then we both move on with our lives, we cannot
treat him as if this is all there is to him for we know that is not the truth.

And it is the same with us. We cannot be treated as if we are simply a means to
an end. While it is true that each of us enters into transactions where we trade
our labor for goods and services (even if we are born incredibly wealthy and
never have to labor in our lives, the money we inherit is stored labor that we
trade), and these transactions are perfectly appropriate, it is not true that these
transactions make up the totality of what it is for us to be us. And it is not just the
case that others cannot treat us as merely a means to an end, we cannot treat
ourselves that way. This is why Kant famously argues against masturbation. He
argues that masturbation necessarily treats our bodies as a means to an end. For
Kant, when we do this, we reduce ourselves to animals and this is immoral.
Nature made us into something special, something capable of bringing morality
and justice into existence. When we ignore this ability we tragically act in a
manner for which we were not made.
Now Kant allowed for the possibility that certain creatures that were born with
human characteristics would nonetheless be unable to be rational--someone
born with an especially low IQ perhaps or with some other mental defect. These
creatures, while being human, carry no moral agency. That is, they cannot make
moral decisions and hence we do not hold them responsible, morally or legally,
for their behavior. And this is indeed the first question that is asked of a person
before they stand trial in the United States. Is this person capable of telling right
from wrong? If so, they go to trial. If not, they go to some other facility. A human
who has an IQ of say 60 and who steals a pack of gum from a store is not held
morally or legally responsible for what they have done because they cannot
understand the morality of it. Neither can a child, though this is different because
a child can, and hopefully, will learn how to tell right from wrong. But this again is
why we do not hold seven year olds responsible for their behavior. They simply
do not know right from wrong yet.

In every situation then, across all cultures and across all religions and across all
times, humans have one true purpose. That purpose is to bring morality and
justice into existence. This is done by always treating humanity as an end in itself,
as a subject, and never as an object.

While this may seem simplistic, this can be extremely difficult to do. In our busy
and frustrating lives it can be very tempting and very easy to see other people as
something we can use as a means to our own goals. But that is not why they exist
and when we do this we behave immorally. A rational human is never an object.
Human cannot make themselves into objects either. A prostitute may say that she
gives her permission to be used as an object but to Kant that would be like saying
that she is a unicorn. It doesn’t matter how many times she says it or with what
urgency she says it, she is not in fact an object and cannot make herself into one.
She is a subject always, like all other rational humans.

The Utiltarians
Living at the same time as Kant there was a man named Jeremy Bentham (1748-
1832). While Kant lived on the continent, Bentham lived in England. Bentham read
Kant’s works and famously called them nonsense upon stilts. He vehemently
disagreed with Kant over even the very basis of morality. Bentham was a
consequentialist. This means he thought the consequences of an action were all
that mattered, not the intention. If you look at the moral philosophies of Kant and
Aristotle, you can see that they focus on intentions. The outcome of an act may
be bad, but as long as the intention of the act was moral, the act itself was moral.
Bentham did not think the intention mattered, it was simply the consequences.
He wrote:
Nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is
for them alone to determine what we should do.

For Bentham, we pursue pain and avoid pleasure. What brings us pleasure we call
good, what brings us pain we call bad. It is that simple. Morality then is the
pursuit of the maximum amount of pleasure and the minimization of pain. But be
careful here because Bentham is not simply talking about our own pleasure and
pain but rather everyone’s pleasure and pain. (Even people who pursue pain
pursue it because pain brings them pleasure.) In fact, Bentham would argue
anything that can feel pain, any sentient being, needs to be taken into
consideration. The modern animal rights movement will follow Bentham here.
Bentham famously says the question (of whether or not something counts as
being morally relevant) is not can he talk? Or can can he reason? But can he
suffer?

The Principle of Utility is the moral principle for utlitarians. It is simply:

Actions should be approved or disapproved according to the tendency which it

appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose
interest is in question.

Unlike Aristotle, Bentham is not concerned with any difference between pleasure
and happiness. For him, they are the same thing.

There are a lot of usages for utilitarianism in the modern world. Most
governments use it in determining policy as do most large organizations. These
types of organizations are often faced with the question of how to maximize
pleasure and minimize pain for the greatest amount of people. And they turn to
something that Bentham produced called the hedonistic calculus.

The hedonistic calculus is a calculation designed to maximize pleasure and

minimize pain. There are seven different criteria on the hedonistic calculus
according to Bentham. They are:

Intensity
Duration
Certainty
Remoteness (how near or how far are the pleasures/pains?)
Fecundity (chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind)
Purity-(chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite
kind)
Extent
To perform the hedonistic calculus, one is to take an account of the value of each
distinguishable pleasure which appears to be produced by it in the first instance.
Second, take an account of the pain which appears to be produced in it by the
first instance. Next, one takes account of the pleasure produced in the second
instance. Then the pain produced in the second instance. Then we sum up all
pleasures on one side and the pain on the other. Take an account of the number
of persons whose interest appears to be concerned and finally sum up all goods
and all pains. Whichever is highest dictates the answer, if more pleasures then the
action is moral, if more pains then the action is immoral. Unhappiness results
from acting on the basis of impulses without rational calculations.

So for example, if we were trying to decide whether or not marijuana should or

should not be legal, we would take into consideration all of the pleasures
produced by it’s being legal and all of the pain produced. It is a complicated issue
and one Bentham would have liked. Bentham is famous for his defense of social
and legal reform. He did not think it was appropriate to put people in jail simply
to punish them for this was just causing more pain in the world. If you could put
people in jail and expect to get more happiness out of it, for example, if they
could be reformed, then that would be fine but he did not think one could
defend punishment simply for retribution.

I am not going to delve deeply into the issue here. But it makes a good one for
beginning the discussion on utilitarianism. What would produce the greatest
amount of happiness for the greatest number of people? And whose interests
would be at stake in this issue? More than likely, every American would have a
stake, even if a small one in this issue. Mexico and Canada too would have an
interest in this issue. Perhaps the reach of this issue would extend even further.
This illustrates one of the difficulties with using the hedonistic calculus. It is
difficult to put a number on how many people are affected by this issue and to
put a number on the manner in which they are affected. This problem is known as
the incommensurability of values. How do we put a number on how happy it
would make people versus how much pain it would cause? While the difficulty of
doing this does not mean that utilitarianism is wrong, it does cause a problem.

Bentham argued that all pleasure and all pain counted the same. For this, his
theory was heavily criticized. Specifically it was pointed out that if all pleasures
and pains counted the same then it would be best to indulge all of our more base
pleasures. It was (and is) argued that the more esoteric pleasures (say for
example in studying art or music) would be overridden constantly by the pursuit
of simpler pleasures like sex or drugs. Bentham himself did not see this and stood
by his claims but John Stuart Mill did see these problems and did think that
utilitarianism needed to address these issues.
John Stuart Mill was Jeremy Bentham’s godson. James Mill, John Stuart’s father,
was a good friend of Bentham and at a very young age subjected John Stuart to
quite an intense education. Mill grew up in the utilitarian world of his father and
godfather and was to hold these beliefs the rest of his life. But he did revise them
a bit. He argued that certain pleasures were indeed beter than other pleasures
and should count more on the hedonistic calculus. He added what came to be
known as the ‘quality proviso’ to the utilitarian calculus. Simply stated, this
proviso just says that there are two classes of human pleasure, higher and lower,
and that the higher pleasures should count for more on the calculus.

Higher pleasures, Mill says, are the distinctly human pleasures. They possess
greater permanency, safety and uncostliness and are ennobling, satisfying and
enduring. Mill asks us to look at the life of Socrates. If a pig can live a completely
satisfied life while a thoughtful and morally concerned individual like Socrates
cannot ever be satisfied, is the life of the pig therefore preferable? While some of
us at certain points in our lives might answer yes, for Mill the answer is no.
Humans have pleasures that animals do not and when made aware of them do
not regard anything as happiness which does not contain those pleasures. We
know higher pleasures are better Mill argues because people who are exposed to
higher and lower pleasures are able to explain that the higher pleasures fulfill our
distinctly human faculties. For Mill, happiness can be found in the satisfaction of
curiosity, and in the pursuit of higher intellectual interests. A cultivated mind finds
sources of interest in everything. Unhappiness results from a lack of mental
cultivation. The uncultivated mind is surrounded by sources of interest and
pleasure but discovers few lasting ones. Unfortunately, a good portion of
mankind have uncultivated minds. As young men and women they may start out
pursuing everything noble but because of their station in life they become
disinterested in the higher pleasures. He writes:

This is because as youth, the love of higher pleasures may be killed off by mere
want of sustenance. If the occupations to which their position in life has devoted
them, and the society to which it has thrown them are not favorable to keeping
that higher capacity in exercise.

Further:

Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily
killed, not only by hostile influences but by mere want of sustenance.

Think of the public education system in the United States. It is the job of the
public education system to create workers for the economy. When planning
school subjects, School Boards get together with local employers and ask them
what it is that students need to know to get a job. Rarely is an employer going to
say that the students need to know art history or philosophy. Instead, they need
to know how to be on time, be obedient, to read and write and do some math.
But never enough so that the student can overcome the class to which they were
born into. Industry needs workers and thus the school system sets out to create
these workers. If you ask college students why they choose whatever major they
choose it will almost always have something to do with the job that they want,
not with any sort of enrichment of their intellect. In order to pursue intellectual
enlightenment, one must have money first. Hence it seems that only wealthy
students have the luxury of majoring in something like art history or music or
philosophy. I often (jokingly) dare students to call up their parents and tell them
they are going to major in art or philosophy. No doubt their parents’ reaction
would be one of fear and perhaps even anger and of course the question, ‘what
are you going to do with that?!’

Consider the following example:

If we took a young healthy person and divided up their different parts, we could
create a lot of happiness. We could give their eyes to one person, their liver to
another, their lungs to someone else, their heart to someone. And if the people
we give their organs to are important people who are well loved and who have a
big influence in the world couldn’t we then justify taking their organs? We
understand that this person would die but the pain would be minimal. We could
knock them out and make it painless. Further we could do it in a manner in which
they didn’t know it was coming so that we just drugged them one afternoon and
they simply went to sleep. Finally, let’s add to this that the person is perhaps a
lone orphan whom no one would miss. Why don’t we do this? Should we?

Nietzsche’s Ethical Egoism

We have discussed three of the four major moral philosophies popular in Western
civilization. The last one we will discuss is known as ethical egoism. It is an old
philosophy, one that Plato gives voice to in his Republic. In the Republic, Plato
has Glaucon ask Socrates to why he should be moral. He puts it this way. If I
could convince everyone that I was moral while at the same time being immoral,
isn’t that what I really want? He understands the benefit of looking moral. If you
appear to be moral, people trust you. People want to be your friend. All sorts of
benefits can be accrued in this manner. But really, you don’t actually want to be
moral. The best benefit comes from looking moral while being immoral. This is
ethical egoism.

In psychology there is a train of thought labeled psychological egoism. It claims

that people only act in their own self interest. Even someone who appears to be
doing something altruistic is doing it ultimately because they want to. Any human
action can be reduced to this. A mother sacrifices for her children because she
has made the choice that she would rather suffer than see her children suffer.

Ethical egoism takes this a step further. Not only is this the way people act, this is
the way people should act. Friedrich Nietzsche made this position famous in the
late 1800’s. While he is not the first person to argue this, in many ways he is the
best, and certainly the most passionate. Plato will ultimately give an argument
against ethical egoism in his Republic but I do not want to go into that here. Let
us turn to look at what Nietzsche has to say on the matter.

In his book The Gay Science and in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche will give
credence to ethical egoism. A healthy society should allow superior individuals to
exercise their will to power, their drive toward domination and exploitation of the
inferior. One can immediately notice that we’re not in a nice ethical world any
longer. Superior individuals? Drive toward domination? Exploitation of the
inferior? These are all things that most of us have been taught are bad things. But
we believe this at our own peril.Nietzsche wants us to understand that morality is
the herd instinct of the individual.

Nietzsche looks at the traditional sources of morality, that is God, society and
reason and asks why should a person respect the authority of God or society or
reason? In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche famously writes that God is dead.
Hence, we have no reason to follow his morality. Society is decadent and falling
apart and its moral authority need not be binding on a creative individual who
rejects that decadence and disintegration. He even rejects reason as a source of
morality arguing that there are more important things in life than reason, for
example passion. He also rejects utility as the ultimate source of importance. Our
primary goal in life is the will to power or what might be better understood as
self-expression.

The major impediment to building a better society is our inheritance of the

Judeo-Christian slave morality. For Nietzsche, morality is a kind of trick used to
gain power. It is a trick used by those in power to enslave those who are not in
power. The Judeo-Christian morality teaches us that the meek shall inherit the
earth and that obedience to authority is a good thing. It teaches us that it is good
to be poor and powerless for that is who God loves. It teaches us, from
Nietzsche’s perspective, how to be slaves. It is a morality built by slaves for slaves.
It is a trick used to control masses of people. If we look at the major dictates of
morality-don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, we might ask who benefits from these
prohibitions? The answer is clearly not everyone but simply those who cannot
take care of themselves. The strong can take care of themselves morality is for the
weak.
Nietzsche discusses the difference between slave morality and master morality.
The master morality is the morality of the noble caste. The noble caste was always
the barbarian caste. Their superiority does not consist in their physical power but
in their psychical power. They were complete men which, he argues, at every
point also implies complete beasts. Society does not exist for its own sake but
rather as scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings can elevate
themselves to higher duties and in general to a higher existence. We normally
think of exploitation as a bad thing. When we hear that someone has exploited
someone else we have a negative moral connotation with it. But for Nietzsche,
exploitation is not a bad thing. It is how we in fact survive. It is not good or bad,
in fact it is beyond good and evil. It is part of our nature. It belongs to the nature
of the living being as a primary organic function. It is a consequence of the will
to power which is precisely the will to live. The will to power wants to gain
ground, to grow to ascend not because of any morality or immorality but
precisely because it lives.

The noble type of man regards himself as the determiner of values. He does not
have to be approved of, he knows that he is the determiner of values. He knows
that it is he that determines what does and does not have value. It is he himself
who confers honor upon things. If we live by this we can live lives of self
gratification. We do not need to follow the morality of the slaves. It is not in our
own best interest to do so. Now Nietzsche knows that most people who read his
philosophy will still reject it. He understands that most people have been too
brainwashed into being slaves and will not be able to see past their enslavement.
But he also knows that some people will and it is to these people that he is
writing. He is encouraging us to reach beyond the traditional roles that we have
been assigned and to not be ashamed to be what we are, creatures that need to
exploit and dominate their environment in order to thrive. Traditional morality
teaches us to be ashamed of this. Nietzsche is trying to demonstrate that being
ashamed of this aspect of ourselves is to deny who we in essence are and it only
benefits those who are able to seek self gratification unabashedly. Nietzsche
thinks that such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy. He
writes:

The noble soul accepts the fact of his own egoism without question, and also
without the consciousness of harshness, constraint or arbitrariness therein, but
rather as something that may have its basis in the primary law of things.

Now the slave is someone who follows the slave morality. It is someone who has
been fooled into believing that there is such a thing as the right thing to do and
that one should consider others. It is the morality of the abused, the oppressed
and the suffering. And as such it looks upon those with a kind heart, sympathy
diligence and humility as being virtuous. The slave has an unfavorable eye for the
virtues of the powerful. The slave is skeptical and distrustful of the powerful and
would even try to tell himself that the happiness of the powerful is not genuine.
He would try to convince himself that while the master may be rich and powerful
he is not really happy. He believes that the common man is better off than the
rich man. He comforts himself that he wouldn’t really want a private plane for that
would be too much of a headache. And he would praise those qualities which
serve to alleviate suffering.

Nietzsche sees himself as being the man in Plato’s allegory of the cave who is
trying to tell his friends that what they have been looking at their whole life is not
real. The morality they believe in has been ingrained in them by powerful people
who want to control them. And it has been quite effective. Not only do the
people in power have control, they have legions of people who are too stupid
(Nietzsche’s perspective) to know that they are being controlled and who turn
around and control other people for them. For slave morality, the evil man
inspires fear. For master morality it is precisely the good man who inspires fear
and seeks to arouse it. In slave morality the good man must in any case be the
safe man. He is good natured, easily deceived and perhaps a little stupid.

These four moral philosophies are the major moral philosophies in Western
civilization. There are other moral philosophies out there, but these four are the
ones that are the most common and have had the most influence. We can see
character, respect for human rights, the use of utility and self interest in our
civilization.

TAUTAN:

1. What is Ethics? (Ethics Defined, Ethics Meaning)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr7U49RPpTs

2. What's the difference between morality and ethics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SQUqZWKUwM

3. Moral Standards vs Non-Moral Standards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVYcETMuJg8

4. What are Moral Dilemmas?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwOQ7ZqDWN4